This map of colonial Guiana (present-day Suriname) is the work of Jan Jansson (died 1664), a Dutch cartographer who married into the Hondius family of illustrious mapmakers. Jodocus Hondius (1563-1612) and his sons, Jodocus and Henricus, engraved maps of the Americas and Europe, and were instrumental in popularizing the work of Gerard Mercator, the developer of the Mercator Projection that allowed navigators to use a flat map reflecting the curvature of the globe. The Hondius family published an early pocket-size atlas of the Mercator map. The atlas series grew under ...

This large folding map, issued by the London Geographical Institute during World War I, shows the islands of the Caribbean Sea and the approaches to the Panama Canal. The canal had opened to traffic in early 1914, shortly before the outbreak of the war. Protection of the canal against possible sabotage by Germany was a concern of U.S. military planners in World War I and, especially, during World War II. The map shows telegraph lines, undersea cables, and the distances in nautical miles of steamer routes from the key ...

This map, prepared and printed in 1908 at the office of the Ordnance Survey, Southampton, United Kingdom, provides a relatively detailed view of the geography of British Guiana (present-day Guyana), one of only two British colonies on the mainland of South and Central America (the other being British Honduras). A note indicates that the portion of the map north of 5° North latitude is from a map prepared by the government surveyor of British Guiana, while the remainder of the map “has been compiled from various sources and is less ...

This 18th-century map shows the Dutch plantations in Suriname and Berbice. The map is oriented with the north at the bottom. The names ascribed to locations outside the neatly demarcated plantations suggest resistance to Dutch domination by local Indians, indentured servants, and slaves imported from Africa. They include several places marked “rebel villages,” “village of runaways,” and “village of rebel slaves.” The inset map in the upper right gives a detailed view of Paramaribo, the chief city and port of Suriname. The numbered key lists the main streets, along with ...

Robert Hermann Schomburgk (1804–65) was a British naturalist and surveyor known for his pioneering surveys of British Guiana (present-day Guyana). Born and educated in Germany, he traveled to the West Indies in 1830 where he completed a survey of one of the Virgin Islands that was published in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society. In 1835–39, under the direction of the Royal Geographical Society, he explored the Essequibo and Berbice Rivers in northern South America and completed a survey of British Guiana. Upon returning to Europe, he ...

This map of part of the northern coast of South America is a Dutch version of a map originally produced around 1650 by Nicolas Sanson (1600–1667), royal geographer to Kings Louis XIII and XIV, and commonly known as the father of French cartography. Numerous editions copied from Sanson were printed in the early 18th century. The map covers the region from the island of Trinidad and the mouth of the Orinoco River in the west to the mouth of the Amazon River in the southeast. Sanson divides this area ...

This detailed 1802 map, drawn by a Dutch military officer and issued by the distinguished Amsterdam cartographic publishing firm of Covens and Mortier, shows the Dutch colony of Berbice as it appeared at the beginning of the 19th century. Located along the Berbice River in present-day Guyana, Berbice was established in 1627 under the authority of the Dutch West India Company. The inset map in the upper left, oriented with north at the bottom, shows Berbice in relation to Suriname, its larger sister colony. The main map is oriented with ...

This 18th-century Dutch map, produced in Amsterdam by the publisher Isaak Tirion (circa 1705–circa 1769), shows the northern coast of South American and its offshore islands, including Curaçao, Bonaire, and neighboring islands; Trinidad and Tobago; and Grenada. Guiana is divided, from west to east, into Spanish, Dutch, and French sections, corresponding roughly to a part of present-day Venezuela and present-day Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana. The territory to the south of Guiana, in present-day Brazil, is labeled as Portuguese. Three scales are given in the main map: French and ...

In preparation for the peace conference that was expected to follow World War I, in the spring of 1917 the British Foreign Office established a special section responsible for preparing background information for use by British delegates to the conference. Introduction to the Guiana Colonies is Number 134 in a series of more than 160 studies produced by the section, most of which were published after the conclusion of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. The study deals with three territories on the northern coast of South America: French Guiana, Dutch ...

In preparation for the peace conference that was expected to follow World War I, in the spring of 1917 the British Foreign Office established a special section responsible for preparing background information for use by British delegates to the conference. British Guiana is Number 135 in a series of more than 160 studies produced by the section, most of which were published after the conclusion of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. The book covers physical and political geography, political history, social and political conditions, and economic conditions. The section on ...

This hand-colored map of Guiana (present-day French Guyana, Suriname, and Guyana) is the work of Jodocus Hondius (1563-1612), the patriarch of one of the most famous Dutch mapmaking families. The map includes annotations in Dutch about the indigenous peoples of northern South America, along with fantastic illustrations of South American animals. The Amazon and Orinoco rivers are both well depicted on the map.

This folding map of South America and the West Indies, printed on two separate sheets, with uncut margins, was engraved for the second edition of the fourth part of Hulsius' collection of voyages, which consists altogether of 26 parts. The "Vierte Schiffart" (Fourth voyage) is an account of Ulrich Schmidel's voyage to Brazil and the Rio de la Plata from 1534 to 1554. In this second edition of the map, three islands have been inserted below the bottom border of the lower map, with the name "Francisci Draco Ins ...

This photograph shows a man on the savannahs of Guyana, carrying his equipment and belongings in a warashi (a knapsack-like basket) on his back. He appears to be prepared for a trek into the interior of Guyana, in search of gold and diamonds. A porkknocker is a Guyanese prospector and miner who extracts and processes gold and diamonds using simple methods. These rugged individualists have been responsible for some of the great discoveries of gold and diamonds in Guyana's interior. The photograph is from the collection of the Columbus ...

This photograph shows three porkknockers in the interior of Guyana. A porkknocker is a Guyanese prospector and miner who extracts and processes gold and diamonds using simple methods. These rugged individualists have been responsible for some of the great discoveries of gold and diamonds in Guyana's interior. There are many stories of porkknockers who struck it rich, but then spent their fortunes in ways both tragic and comic. The photograph is from the collection of the Columbus Memorial Library of the Organization of American States (OAS), which includes 45 ...

This three-volume work by a Spanish author of uncertain identity, Francisco (François) Coreal, was published in Amsterdam in 1722. It purports to be the French translation of a first-hand account, in Spanish, of multiple voyages to Brazil and Spanish America undertaken by Coreal over a span of 30 years, from 1666-97. Coreal's supposed voyages cover about half of the three volumes. The rest of the work is comprised of a heterogeneous set of texts taken from the travelogues of Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) and several of his contemporaries. Many ...